Whispers in the dark rewrite
by ravenclawseekergirl638
Summary: This summer Harry faces a new enemy, one that he might not be able to defeat. Does he let it take over his life, or is he going to fight back? There is only one problem...    R/S mentor fic Now complete!
1. Books

**Whispers in the dark Rewrite**

**A/N: Hi guys, yes I know its been a while, but hey a lot of stuff has happened in the real world lately. I first started writing Whispers in the dark in April during one of the worst periods of my life to date. Since then things have gotten better but they're not 'normal'. Due to the massive gap in time since the last posting I decided to rewrite the story, go down a slightly different path and hopefully give you a better insight. The stuff that happens in the story and things that Harry feels are often things that I have, though not always. Sorry for the massive a/n and the huge wait. Thanks to everyone who has read, reviewed and favourited the old story and without further adieu here is the new instalment.**

Chapter one Books

It was dark yet again outside the window; his bedroom curtains deepened this darkness. Months had passed by since he had looked out a window, at the world beyond. This was one of the rules. Closing the curtains meant that the world was darker, but also meant that he couldn't be watched. Harry stretched out on his bed, holding a copy of the latest cult fiction novel, he snorted disgustedly as he finished the first chapter. The first page had been enough for him to know that it wasn't going to be any good; the little he knew about vampires cemented that fact. Sighing in annoyance Harry threw it into the bin beside the bed.

Leaning over his bed the teenage boy picked up another volume from the pile that lay there. The aim this year was to finish them all before school started. At the end of school Harry had given his friend Hermione a bag of Galleons and had asked her to buy him some books from both the magical and muggle worlds so that he did not die of boredom over the holidays. She had done well and had managed to locate all of the books he had asked for and since he had insisted that she spend all of the money, god only knew he had too much of it , she had purchased a number of books that she thought that he might like. The range in styles and subjects was vast, from non-fiction on bugs to the great classics such as Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

He couldn't deny that he was using them to distance himself from the remaining family members that he had as well as the events of the previous school year. Cedric was a good student and even, one of Harry's few friends, he shouldn't have died. The boy had, had so many plans and ideas, none of them would ever come into fruition, now that he had been murdered on Voldermort's orders. At night when Harry tried to sleep he would often return to the graveyard, forced to watch whilst the events repeated over and over before his eyes. There were times when he had to stuff his pillow in his mouth to stop himself from screaming too loudly.

The first time that he had walked back through his memories of that night, he had screamed in horror, waking p his relatives. For other children, Harry was sure that if they had been through the same traumatic things that he had, their relatives would at the very least be concerned about them especially if they were having nightmares that caused them to wake up screaming. He knew that Mr's Weasley would be smothering him with motherly affection and concern if he was at the Burrow now, but he wasn't. Currently, he was trying not to fall asleep.

Other strange things had started happening to Harry but he didn't know this, he had just taken them in his stride. Weird things after all always happened to Harry Potter, why should these be any different.


	2. School

**A/n Wow thanks guys! I never thought that this little story would provoke suck a response. I want to thank everyone that favourite, alerted and even those of you who are reading out in the shadows. It shocked me that some of you decided to add me as a favourite author! You strange, strange people ;). I've decided that this chapter is dedicated to my first reviewer Pelowskin.**

Chapter 2 Primary school

It was now one in the morning and although Harry was exhausted, he didn't dare sleep. So far he had gotten through two Redwall books that he had liked because of the mystery solving that had to be done. It was fun to try to solve the puzzle before the characters in the book did. A horrible histories book about the Stone Age had also been avidly read although it alternated between funny and gruesome. Harry couldn't help but think that people, might actually like history ofmagic if it was taught in the same way as this series of books. This could be possible, as when Harry had picked up the book he couldn't put it down again until he had finished reading it that was how interesting it was. Now he was reading a book by Roald Dahl about a fox and three farmers. He remembered it being a favourite book of his, from when he had attended primary school. The teacher had given it to him to read, when she had realised that the books that the rest of the students were reading were far below his reading level.

Harry had learned from a very young age that you could lose yourself in a book, in its story, in the world that it creates and its characters. During times at 'home' when he felt lonely or when his Aunt and Uncle were shouting at him, Harry retreated into these places in his mind. After all they were more fun than the real world ever was, nor ever could be.

By the time that he had reached year four, being nine, Harry was reading texts that even some adults had never read. At the time he remembered the teacher bringing him books to read from their own homes, because he had read absolutely everything in the school library. He also remembered having to get special permission from the head teacher so that he could read The Lord of The Rings, as long as he didn't discuss it with other students and didn't leave it lying round. It had been harder to read than other books he had been given, but he had eventually finished it and Middle Earth had become his favourite place to dwell. Harry dreamt of nothing but elves, dwarves and kings. He didn't want to dream of anything else. The world that he had chosen to dwell in was far superior in his mind than the one in which he was stuck in. Dreams and waking thoughts were slowly pulling him further down into the world of Middle Earth and shutting out everything to do with the real one.

When he was in a room, with other people it felt like he was in a bubble, with, but separated from others. It was like he was on auto pilot or seeing someone elses life through their eyes. This feeling of being separate, apart from everyone else seemed to be worsening with time; it had started before Cedric's death.

His relatives in a change from last year were ignoring him much more than usual. This attitude had left Harry feeling invisible and when they did talk to him, it was the same old stuff.

"It's your fault FREAK!", "Shut up NOW!"" and it was this treatment that was starting to both really annoy him and sink him further into the despair that he was feeling. Why couldn't he have an ordinary life, with family that actually cared about him, about whether he was dead or not? It wasn't like he was asking for much. Thousands of other people his age had that, but no Harrry Potter couldn't have that, his life had to be a mess of the highest order.

Harry moved to his bed and flopped down boneless onto it, causing it to emit a loud metallic screeching noise. It was no use hoping that the letters from his friends and god father would make him feel better. Instead of being filled with both the warmth and news that he was used to, they were tense and offered many tantalising clues and glimpses into whatever was going on. Harry let out an angry puff of air and slowly, finally slid into sleep.

...


	3. Contemplated revenge

Whispers in the dark re-write

**Whispers in the dark**

A/n Hey guys I'm sorry that i didn't update on Saturday, but I had to go Christmas shopping with my family in the SNOW! If you've read anything of mine before you'll know that not hearing from me for some time is actually quite normal. I'm sorry for the shortness of the entries and the lack of what seems like any plot, but that's how I write. I find it hard to keep things going or to move them in any particular direction. I dohave the story 'loosely' (please take special note of this word)planned out up to chapter 27. Yay!

Chapter 3 Contemplated revenge 

When Harry awake, he felt twice as tired as he had before falling asleep and there was an ache in all his joints. It took all of his effort and willpower to level himself out of his warm bed. The sun beaming from behind his closed curtains was already strong indicating that he had slept much longer than he should have. Sighing heavily Harry padded out of the room and into the hallway. The house was eerily quiet without his Aunt, uncle and cousin in it. They had gone on a 'family' holiday to Majorca and wouldn't be back for another week. In that time Harry was expected to keep the house clean, not to draw any attention to himself and to complete the list of chores that was left on the kitchen worktop. In many ways, this was the best summer holidays he had, had in years, but it was also one of the worst.

He dragged himself into the shower glad at least that Finrod gave him at least some privacy. It was both highly annoying and strangely soothing to have someone chattering away in his ear night and day. Having Finrod with him meant that he didn't feel quite so invisible or alone anymore. Harry could discuss things with Finrod that he could never talk to anyone else about. Not even Ron and Hermione. The heat of the water helped to work out some of the kinks in his muscles but Harry wasn't sure whether he could ever summon the energy needed to leave the waters comforting embrace again. Eventually though he gathered what strength he had left in him and forced himself back onto the cold bathroom floor tiles. He then proceeded to towel himself off roughly with his 'special' towel. I was basically the most threadbare, scratchiest towel that his Aunt owned, reserved just for him. Harry had decided that he was going to burn Aunt Petunia's beloved pure Egyptian cotton towels and laugh hysterically the moment he turned seventeen and could leave this hell hole. The family deserved this and much, much more he was sure. His revenge needed to stay low key and be personal so that it would never be detected by the ministry. Burnt towels would look like an accident whereas going on a killing spree... just might draw their attention. Anger never got people very far in life. Often it just helped them to dig themselves a bigger hole or to blow the whole thing up beyond all proportion.

Today he had decided was not going to be a good day. All Harry wanted to do was to curl up in his comfy bed and sleep for the next decade or two, but he couldn't he had piles and piles of homework to do and it wouldn't be wise not to do it. To say that Snape would not be impressed would be an understatement of epic proportions. To be brutally honest if Harry didn't do his potions essay, he probably wouldn't live to see sixteen. Dying was not high on his list of priorities at the moment. As he had to every year he to pick the lock of the cupboard under the stairs, as normal his uncle had locked his trunk and broomstick in as soon as Harry had returned. After he had sifted through the layers of robes, parchment and broken quills, he had pulled out his textbooks and left them on the kitchen table. Harry groaned this was going to take forever. His concentration levels, which had never been perfect, were even worse than usual and that was saying something. Every time that he sat down Harry kept getting the feeling that he had something important to do. It also didn't help that Finrod kept chattering away to him asking what he was doing, what things were, popping out of nowhere to scare him (the affects of which were starting to wear off as he did it so often) and talking about his homeland. Half an hour after starting his essay Harry had got no further than writing the title another fifteen minutes later and he had given it up as a bad job and gone to make himself some breakfast.

Thanks for reading!

...raven...


	4. Safety

A/N: Here's another chapter for you. Now we're really starting to get the ball rolling with this story aren't we. This looks like it's going to be a very long story. For you I'm updating early and writing this whilst in college when I should be doing course work. I don't even have to be in college though as it's snowing horrendously and hardly anyone's here. So… 

Chapter 4 Safety

Any other person would say that his room was a mess but to the teenaged 'boy-who-lived' (what kind of name was that anyway?) it was comforting. Having his things strewn all over the floor meant that if someone entered his room that he would hear them before they could kill him. How likely this was to happen Harry didn't know but after the events of last year he knew that he wouldn't take and sense of security for granted again. Hogwarts had been 'safe' and Voldermort had still been able to get him port-keyed out on his orders. How safe could a muggle suburban house be if Voldermort could port-key a student out of Hogwarts extensive wards.

Rolls of parchment, broken quills, empty ink bottles, bags of owl treats and dirty clothing covered his beige carpet. This helped to make the room seem smaller, more manageable, and safer. All those years that he had spent in the cupboard had been safe. Sure his uncle had knocked him around a bit, but the cupboard had been safe nothing bad had happened in it, unlike his room. There was still a stain on the wall were his uncle had smashed his head repeatedly off it when Hedwig had woke him up three years ago. Stuff like that didn't happen that often anymore, mainly because his uncle didn't drink as much as he used to. Maybe it was the threat from his doctor that if he didn't reduce the amount of alcohol that he consumed he would probably be dead in five years time. Your liver has a funny way of dying if you put more poison in than it can handle. For once in his life Vernon seemed to be following someone else's orders. The Apocalypse was probably nigh.

Harry had long lost any faith and in his own words he didn't believe in God or any of that Jesus stuff. Over the years, being treated worse than a rabid dog by his family, he had come to the conclusion that if God did exist he either played favourites or had a very obscure sense of humour. Uncle Vernon had forced the whole family to attend church every Sunday when he was younger. It had first started when he had done his first bit of accidental magic and shown them that he was going to be a wizard just like his father. Reading parts of the holy book were attempts to terrify him into being 'normal'. Obviously it hadn't worked. Then his uncle had scaled up his attack.

Pushing his hair out of his eyes, Harry laughed sadly if Vernon knew that he was batting for the other team as the saying goes, he would probably have a heart attack or chuck him out of the house. He had had to sit through too many homophobic rants to believe what was left of his family would ever accept him.

He jumped over his clothes, heading for the desk where he kept a box of things that his Godfather had sent a week ago. The box and its contents hadn't made up for the lack of information that he was receiving but, at least Sirius's letters weren't completely out of character. It contained a number of items that had belonged to his parents and some photos of the Marauders during their Hogwarts years. As Harry had barely anything to remind himself of his parents, they immediately become one of his most prised possessions. Carefully he lifted a picture from the bottom of the cardboard box and stared at it. The scenery showed within was of the Gryffindor common room with his parents laughing at Sirius who was panting and obviously embarrassed, holding hands with someone just out of the picture. Sirius was one of the people that he was missing the most at the moment. If all had gone well the year before last he could be living with Sirius right now. He sighed for what felt like the hundredth time that day, maybe he was just never meant to be happy. After all the thread of his life had already been spun. There was no way for him to avoid his destiny even if he ran; it would eventually catch up with him.


	5. Distraction

A/N: Hi everyone, yes I am still going on with this fanfic. Thanks to everyone who's read, favourite and put it on alert. I'm afraid that this chapter, like a lot of others is quite short, but hey that's how I work. I have a considerably short attention span. Yay the snow has finally melted!

Chapter 5 Distraction

The letters from his friends had slowly dried up over the last few days. It was probably due to the fact that he had stopped replying to them as frequently and when he did he wasn't asking questions about where they were. There was no point in replying, after all they never told him anything anymore, and his life at the moment did not have enough stimuli in it to provide any news for his friends. Their letters had changed in tone as well to the point where Harry was almost sure that someone else was dictating to them what to write. Usually Ron would ask him things such as whether he thought the Cannon's would win the league this year and whether he wanted anymore food sending. Hermione's were more often than not asked him whether he had finished the book he had been reading before and how he had found it, and whether he had done any of his homework yet. Now their letters wanted him to recount the death of Cedric to them again. It could be that Hermione felt that she should try to help him to get over this traumatic event and was willing to try this via correspondence, as she knew there was no one else there for him, but it could be something more sinister. In any case if he read the words 'I know how you feel' one more time he was going to coat his letters in diluted Streeler slime and see how the sender liked that. They didn't know how he felt, no-one did because they weren't there when it happened and they most certainly weren't him. He was the reason that Cedric Diggory wouldn't live to see his eighteenth birthday. He would have to carry around that guilt forever. Harry didn't even truly know how he felt about it. All his feelings swirled around his body like potion ingredients in a cauldron. First in one direction then in another. It wasn't uncommon for him to cycle through angry, sad, happy, bored and apathetic faster than Dudley could channel hop.

He was currently cleaning his room. Everything followed rules and this rule was that he didn't clean his room until he could no longer stand the mess. This could mean that one sock on the floor was reason enough to clean or it could get to the point where it was almost impossible to get into it. As long as there were no bad smells coming from it his Aunt Petunia didn't care what it looked like. It was not as if she brought guests up to see it. When uncle Vernon's business partners did come round to the house she told them that it was Dudley's den and that there was a lock on it because they wanted to give him his privacy but that they kept a spare key in case of emergencies. If a neighbour came round to see his family, they played a whole other ball game. No longer using the image of a perfect southern, middleclass family, they pulled out a sob story that could melt the hardest of hearts. Petunia's sister and her husband had been in a car crash which had happened under the influence of alcohol and drugs and Harry had barely survived. He was deranged and unstable and even though they tried to keep him safe Harry would steal, to pay for his drug addiction. Right now he attended St Brutus's school were they were putting him through rehab... It went on and on, making them look like angels who were stuck with a down beat kid that they had tried to do everything for and who had no respect from them.

Harry sighed, the vast majority of people in the neighbourhood either didn't know that he existed, or thought him to be a drug addicted criminal that was only a few steps away from being a murderer. Of course all of this had done wonders for his self esteem over the years. If anything, life at Privet Drive had prepared him for the magical world. Some people would stare at him, spread gossip, torment him, want him dead or totally ignore him. That was Harry Potter's life. What he hadn't expected was Hermione, Ron and the rest of the Weasley's. Before Hogwarts he hadn't known what love was. Even now he was finding it hard to understand and grasp its full meaning. The future looked very, very confusing.

Harry pulled down the blind in the living room, before walking over to the television and switching it on gingerly. He was afraid that his magic would cause it to malfunction in some way and cause it to blow up or something similar. Harry had never been allowed to watch the telly and had instead been made to do chores around the house. If his aunt and uncle found that he had even been in the living room he would be in tremendous trouble. In this house the TV was treated like a Holy object, revered, followed blindly and given pride of place. Harry's cousin still believed even now that everything that happened on it was real. The one thing that Harry found out that he hated about TV was the house and antique programmes that were on during the day. But the ones that he liked included various murder mysteries like murder he wrote, Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes and Diagnosis Murder. They made him really have to think about things and sometimes the plots were hilarious and you could almost guarantee that at least two people would die before the mystery was solved. Having solved a number of mysteries with his friends had helped him to solve a small number of cases but the majority of them had just been too hard for him to crack.

A/n : Largest chapter yet :)


	6. Moony and Padfoot

A/N Hey new chapter for you. I hope you like it. Now its time to see the start of some plot A late Happy Christmas and winter solstice to you all.

Chapter 6 Moony and Padfoot

Harry awoke to the noise of people arguing as quietly as is possible and then the smashing of something made of china. He sat bolt upright. Why had he cleaned yesterday? Change only brought bad things, it made them happen! As quietly as he could Harry tip-toed across his room to the door, before slowly, ever so cautiously opening it. Finrod stood behind him pulling his sword from his sheath and warning him to keep quiet. Harry was many things but he was not stupid. He already knew to keep quiet. Being on Voldermort's hit list had taught him that much.

A light was on downstairs and it filtered up the staircase. At the point where the light stopped Harry stood listening intently, trying not to cause the stairs to creak with his weight upon them. The people began moving again Harry realized too late that they were heading towards him and Finrod. As the two individuals passed through the doorway from the living room into the hall, he felt his heart beating faster and faster a tightening of his chest and a strange twisting feeling in his stomach. The dimmed light made them hard to recognize at first but as the first person looked up at him, Harry caught a flash of golden eyes. Eyes that he had only ever seen in one face, the smile that followed their recognition of him helped the scruffy teenager to further identify the pair. It was Lupin and his godfather Sirius. What they were doing here and why? These were the first questions that Harry intended to ask them, as he bounded down the stairs. The plan though was foiled by his godfather who once he had come within arm's reach pulled him into a tight hug. Harry stiffened slightly he didn't like being touched by people. It made him very nervous but what was worse for Harry was that he had learned that other people were dangerous from a very young age, as well as this he was also very shy. Before he had started going to Hogwarts he had had very little interaction with other people apart from his Aunt, Uncle and cousin and the school teachers that he had been taught by over the years. None of the children had wanted to be friends with him because Dudley would bully them and their friends. Eventually no one would play with him because Dudley would then bully them as well. Harry had grown up with no-one and so he found the increasing amount of people that called him friend rather overwhelming. Why would anyone want to be friends with him?

Before long Sirius let go of him holding him at arm's length so that he could look at him properly. His brow scrunched up and he looked at Harry with a look that he wouldn't have been able to understand even if he was looking at his face. For some reason unknown to Harry he didn't like looking at people's faces most especially their eyes. Maybe it was because he was scared that whenever he talked tp someone Harry expected them to be angry, bored, or it could be the fact that he couldn't read the emotions of others. Every time he brought himself to look they seemed to be bottomless holes that you fell in and were very hard to get out of. They were also cold and glassy like, those you would associate with a dead person. To say that this unnerved him was an understatement. When he did bring himself to look at someone's face, it often led to him picking up the wrong emotion such as mistaking confusion and derision.

A/N I'm sorry for the way this story seems to bounce around and isn't really welded together very well... i don't particularly have much focus at the moment.


	7. Remus

AN: Sorry for the long wait for this chapter iv'e been a bit caught up lately trying to sort out my university application and other stuff. It's been a bit hectic round here. I'm afraid it's not a long chapter but you are going to get two today so...

Chapter 7 Remus

Remus stood to one side analyzing the meeting between his lover and Harry. Something in the way the teenager had reacted unnerved him and the scent of fear was almost intoxicating. The lycanthrope sent a meaningful look over the top of Harry's tousled head, to Sirius who nodded showing that he had received it, and that he knew something was amiss too. Although Harry was usually shy this was just a little bit more severe than mere shyness.

Both he and Sirius had been warned by Arthur Weasley that the Dursleys, Vernon in particular were very vocal about not wanting wizards in their house. On occasion Vernon would even resort to physical violence to get them out of the house. So he and the escaped convict that he called his best friend had arrived expecting the shit to hit the proverbial fan but it seemed that Harry was the only person in the house. It was two o'clock in the morning where the hell could they be? No decent sensible person would leave their fifteen year old nephew in the house alone overnight. Especially one with Harry's ability to land himself in trouble without one ounce of help. Remus smiled as he saw the smile that had lit up the whole of the scruffy teenagers face. Harry should smile more often every time that Remus had seen him in his third year a permanent frown had been on his face. That may have been because he had an escaped mass murderer out to kill him, but something niggled at the back of Remus's mind all the last year. Harry's lack of fear in the face of death scared him a little. He would never have thought that ... but for the look in his eyes. Cold and dead, empty as if his soul was no longer there. Some people called it the thousand yard stare. This was the gaze of a soldier who had fought for too long and seen things that no-one ever should. Things that he would have to live with for the rest of his life. It was true that Harry had seen and experienced more than anyone should have to but he had managed to pull through with what seems like minimal damage. Padfoot might believe that he was mostly ok but Remus knew better after all he was a master of hiding his true feelings. There were very few people that were able to pierce through his armor after years of him reinforcing it. The waters may seem to be relatively calm around Harry for now, but that was merely the surface and underneath he was paddling for his life. Emotional pain after all was a hell of a lot harder to deal with than physical. At least after he had completed his transformations back into his human body he could dose himself up on enough pain killers to knock out a horse to enable himself to deal with it. For the stuff on the inside all you could do was deal with it and tell people that you trusted. Therefore you would be able to lift some of the load off. Remus highly doubted that Harry had ever trusted anyone enough with his negative feelings. Positive ones he was willing to share with his friends but... It was this and Harry's obvious bottling nature that worried him the most. There was only so much pressure that the human body could take before something exploded.

It didn't take a genius to see that Harry who was usually painfully thin had lost even more weight during his stay at his relative's house. He Sirius and Harry would have to have a very in-depth conversation when they arrived at home. Grief was known to do strange things to people. After all Feanor did go on a murdering rampage to retrieve the wergild he had created that had been stolen by his father's murderer. Remus hoped that they were nowhere near that point with Harry. This didn't look like a case of suppressed diet due to grief caused by seeing his friend dying and Remus wanted to get to the bottom of it. Without facing something you are unable to deal with it you can only run. But no one can run forever, eventually it will hunt you down and be the worse for it.

a.n I hope you liked the new chapter. See you with another one in a small while.


	8. Dudley

A/N This chapter was inspired by a story that I read were Dudley is a boxer and gay. I can't remember the name of it but… It's good. It made me happy anyway. Dudley gets the man he wants in the end. 

Chapter 8 Dudley 

Harry sat at the kitchen table across from both Remus and his godfather. Without his conscious thought his knee was bouncing up and down smacking of the bottom of the wooden lip from the table. It was one of his nervous reactions, like the fact that a muscle in his arm was twitching as well as one under his eye. Sometimes he would start tapping his leg or face or... well the list goes on and on but it was something that although it did give him some strange feeling of comfort, he was often unable to stop it. It would happen in other things to like opening and shutting doors, clicking a pen or tearing things. Repetition made him feel better, you knew what to expect. Click, click, click, click and click. Over and over again. It was hard for him to leave routines if he did something one way it was hard to change it. Usually he ended up reverting back to whatever he had done before because the new way created too much anxiety. That was why he never put on much weight when he was at school, he was used to not eating, he knew what he was allowed to eat and even though his friends at times seemed to be worried about how much he ate, he made the effort at feasts to eat as much as he could fit into his shrunken stomach. Every welcome feast he practically dove into it head first but that was mainly because every year his relatives gave him less and less to eat, though sometimes Dudley managed to sneak him some food.

His cousin had decided to cut his intake of food when he came back from school after the first year at Smeltings. He had been bullied horrifically for his weight and it made him realize what he had put Harry through all those years. The first day that he had decided to eat less his parents had become hysterical, especially Petunia thinking that he was ill. After that Dudley had realized that his parents would never understand and had started to sneak food away from the table wrapped in his jacket, which he would then push through the cat flap in Harry's door. Without this Harry was sure that he wouldn't have been alive right now, but the thought didn't have the same amount of gravity that usually would have. In the end all of us die and there is nothing that can be done about that. Obviously Voldermort, had done something, but Harry wouldn't have called what he had really living. Dudley and he were hardly friends but they had found a new lack of animosity between them that suited them both fine. His cousin could try to purge his feelings of guilt and try to make up for the things that he had done to him as a child and Harry could help guide someone onto a straighter path and lead them away from the dark. It also helped that here he was able to have an ally in the constant war between his Aunt and Uncle and him. Deep down it seemed that Dudley was a decent person who carried a lot of secrets.

It had been a shock to him that one the second week back for the holidays his cousin had come into his room after stealing the keys for all the deadbolts from his father's bedside cabinet . They had never shared a kind word between them up this point as they had come to the agreement that the adults shouldn't know that anything had changed for fear that they would increase Harry's punishments and turn on Dudley. But that day a much thinner Dudley walked through the door holding a sports bag filled with non perishable food products and he became Harry's best friend in the world. Dudley still had problems with his weight but he had learned what being hungry actually was and what, was just loneliness. Harry could empathize with this as he had intimate knowledge of both and they were horrifically similar. It hadn't helped and it still didn't that his aunt and uncle constantly berated his cousin if he didn't eat everything that was on his plate. And boy did they over pile it. Over the years he had fought a long hard battle to rid himself of the excess weight, one that at times he was close to giving in and raiding the fridge.

Quietly his cousin had swung the door close after removing the keys from one of the locks and he stood there in his jeans and t-shirt a blush on his face. Harry at the time had been untying a letter from the foot of a tawny owl that was hovering outside the bars of his window. The letter was slightly crumpled as he pulled his hand through the metal but thankfully it hadn't torn. He then placed it on the rickety desk that was pushed up against the wall on top of the gradually growing number of letters that had been left there unopened. If Hermione and Ron were not going to tell him anything then he wasn't going to reply anymore. It was their own fault. He looked up at his cousin who was stood there in the middle of the room eyes firmly looking at his feet and shuffling from one to the other.

"Harry...err well I don't know who else to tell but..." Dudley was barely whispering but after years of playing quidditch and tracking a tiny ball by the sound of its wings in the wind, crowd noise and voices of his team mates Harry managed to catch it. Whatever his older cousin wanted to say was obviously hard for him to talk about. He lifted an eyebrow waiting for him to finish his sentence. "Well I'm gay." Harry blinked in shock as his cousin blurted out one of his inner-most deepest darkest secrets.

"Join the club."He responded whilst walking round to face a boy who had once made his life hell.

Sirius and Remus were staring at him in a way that was making him particularly uncomfortable, it was like they could see straight through him. The twitching of his leg seemed to speed up and he consciously tried to stop it by placing his hand on his knee and pushing down. Remus was unfolding a piece of paper that was laid on the table and Harry realizing what it was made dive for it. Earlier in the week he had decided to draw his 'family' (not the Dursley's but his adopted one) and he didn't want anyone to see it. It was private.

A/n: I'm sorry that I didn't manage to get this chapter out when I said that I would but I've just received my first reply from university and I've got an interview. I'd be happy if this wasn't the one that I wanted to go to the most. So I'm pretty sanxious at the moment


	9. Number 12 Grimmauld Place

A/n The end of this chapter is a little bit lame but, it took forever to write and I can't seem to change it so I'm afraid you're stuck with it. 

Chapter 9 Number 12 Grimauld Place

Remus had given him the drawing but had given him a piercing stare that he had tried to avoid. It gave him a strange creepy crawly feeling all over his body that urged him to flee the room. Being stared at made him feel that he had done something wrong and that he had made that person angry. It may seem like an irrational thing to others but after fourteen years living with his relatives and their animosity he just wanted people to like him. Harry often found himself bending over backwards to fit in other people and what they wanted. When Ron hadn't believed him last year it had almost tore his heart out of his chest and he had expected Hermione to react in the same way. After all most people only wanted to be with him because of his fame. Harry found it very hard to make friends, but when he did he put down roots into them that he believed would last forever. Sadly it was too common an occurrence that people left him because he clung on too hard. To put it blankly he was terrified of being alone but he also wanted to be alone to. He just didn't know what he wanted anymore.

"Harry where are your Aunt and Uncle?" Sirius asked from across the table, fiddling with the edge of the pristine white table cloth. Harry blinked trying to come up with a suitable excuse for why they were not here.

"They've gone to visit Uncle Vernon's sister Marge. She's in hospital." This of course was a downright lie of the highest order. They were on holiday in Majorca and wouldn't be back for quite some time, Uncle Vernon had just been promoted at the drill company and the bonus that he had been given meant that they could take a long holiday somewhere nicer to look at than Surrey. Although they had left him at 'home' alone with no money and not much to eat Harry was glad they had gone. It meant that there was no-one breathing down his neck all the time, he just had to ensure that he finished the list of chores and didn't break any of the rules because they would know about it.

"Let's go get your things shall we." His godfather said whilst hauling himself up from the chair, Azkaban had not been too grand for his joints. Yet again Harry panicked they couldn't go in his room that was his no one ever went in it. There was stuff in there that was private like his diary and pictures that he had drawn and all his books. Stuff that was beyond personal; that was his soul transcribed or drawn onto paper.

"No its fine I'll get it myself!" He shouted as he sprinted off out of the room and up the stairs hoping to get there in enough time to block them from getting in. Once in his room Harry quickly pushed the battered old chest of drawers in front of the door. Breathing heavily he started to gather his things putting them into his trunk which never seemed to be full. It probably had some kind of expansion charm on the inside of it; he would have to ask Hermione about it. Harry threw himself onto the floor and groped under the bed for the loose floorboard. It was here that he stored all of the things that meant the most to him. His father's invisibility cloak, the marauders map, the knife that Sirius had given him, the box of photos and a shoe box. Everything was eventually fished out and put into the trunk before he moved the wooden chest of drawers back to its original position and dragged his trunk down the stairs. He would get his school books on the way out. Sirius and Remus were waiting for him at the table and stood up as soon as he walked into the room. Remus passed him his school books, which he quickly stowed into his trunk.

Finrod was back again and stood, leaning against the door frame nonchalantly swinging his sword back and forward. This brought Harry some comfort, after all he didn't know where he was going and it make him even more anxious than he already was. He didn't think that they were going to the Weasley's house, because surely Mr. Weasley would have come to take him. No something was going on and he didn't like it one bit. He winked at Harry whilst turning to follow them as they walked out of the kitchen it was good to know that a warrior of legendary proportions had his back. Once outside the house Sirius took his arm and side apparated him (well that was what he had called it anyway) to a dingy street he had never seen before. After the experience of being pulled through a tight tube Harry was sure that he never wanted to experience it again. Upon landing he had immediately thrown up all over the pavement. He hated magical travel and it hated him.

Sirius was half carrying him, half dragging him towards the houses on the other side of the street. They seemed to be heading to the most run down and neglected house in probably the whole neighborhood. The small garden at the front of the house was overgrown and filled with rubbish, the slight wind rustling the crisp packets.

"Welcome to number twelve Grimauld Place Harry!" His godfather sighed before pulling open the door.


	10. I'm not hungry

Chapter 10 I'm not hungry

The change in environment hadn't made him feel any better than he had at his aunt and uncles house. At least there he had been able to talk to Finrod whenever he wanted to. For some reason he knew that he couldn't talk to him if other people were around, he could talk to him by moving his lips slightly or by willing his thoughts to him. People didn't need to know about his friend. He and Finrod were quite happy on their own, though increasingly others would wander through and sometimes stop for a chat. The majority of these individuals didn't bother Harry they were positive forces or neutral ones. He could not deny though that some of them really unnerved him. Earlier that morning out the corner of his eye he had been sure that he had seen a little girl with pigtails holding a teddy bear, which seemed perfectly innocent, but she had left bloody footprints behind her as she walked down the corridor. Number twelve Grimauld place was just as bad on the inside as it was on the outside. It hadn't been inhabited since Sirius's mother had died over a decade ago. Dust lay throughout the house like snow in drifts and cobwebs clung to the chandeliers. To put it blankly it was pretty creepy. The Black family had been predominately Slytherin blood purists and many members had joined the ranks of the death eaters over the years. They also specialized in black magic which explained some of the items that they had come across and the fact that almost everything in the house had snakes on it somewhere. Sirius and Remus had tried to clean it up a little before they had come to pick him up, but there was only so much that two people and magic were able to achieve in a short space of time. The family's house elf had died not long after Walburga Black had passed away Harry had learned from Sirius as they passed a room that's whole wall surface was filled with a tapestry in various stages of repair. This room had made Sirius's usually confident stride and banter slowly dissipate whilst they were in it and that made Harry wonder what was wrong. They had left soon after entering and Harry resolved that he would come back and try to find out the mystery of the room.

Sirius and Remus had explained to him that first day that they no longer trusted Dumbledore or the Weasley matriach. Ron, Fred and George had seen the way he had, had to live at the Dursley's home. They had, upon their immediate arrival at the Burrow informed their mother of the dire situation at his house but she had brushed it aside, ignored it or explained it away. Molly Weasley had known what was going on there and the three of them could never forgive her. Dumbledore and the Weasley matriarch were as thick as thieves, and they were thieves. No-one had saw fit to tell him that whilst Sirius had been in prison Albus Dumbledore had become his magical guardian despite his parents having an exhaustive list of people that they would rather have been. This meant that the old codger had full access to his trust vault and had been making large monthly withdrawals from it for years. He had ensured that Harry had lived as miserable a childhood as possible that he was starved of affection and would turn to the first source of it he could find whilst robbing him blind. After all no self respecting pureblood would walk through Kings cross Station shouting their heads off about the platform the need for secrecy be damned. Mrs. Weasley had been paid a considerable amount to do so by the esteemed headmaster despite the need to keep the platform secret from muggles she had gone through whith the plan. Harry wondered that, as over the years, muggleborn witches and wizards families had been informed of the world how large a proportion of muggles actually knew about the magical world. If it was a large proportion then why bother with it at all. There are millions of things that muggles could do easily that the Wizarding world couldn't. For god's sake they still used quills and ink when ballpoint pens were widely available to muggle children. After fifteen years of neglect and abuse he had been saved by Remus and Sirius. There would be no going back now to the Dursleys home. No doubt when Dumbledore finally released the information of his disappearance there would be absolute pandemonium. Harry snickered away to himself that was going to be fun. The entirety of the Wizarding worlds would panic wondering where the boy-who-lived could possibly be. Dumbledore would be in trouble…The saddest part of their plan was that he couldn't contact his friends as no-one outside of their group could know that he was safe, for now. That and Mrs Weasley was likely to read Ron's mail. Hopefully this wouldn't ruin their friendship and they would understand why it had to be this way. Ron and Hermione had been his first friends and he couldn't imagine his life without them any more they were ttoo close now..

Sirius had been busy over the past year. Whilst on the run he had travelled the world, met with various magical governments and been given legal and fair trials in which he had been proven completely innocent of the crime that he had been sent to Azkaban all those years ago. The only countries that were refusing to accept his innocence where America and England. He was hoping to go to the International Confederation of Wizards and ask them to force through a fair trial in the UK. Only Fudge would be obstinate enough to ignore the fact that he had been tried under the universal truth serum and therefore had been unable to lie. Fudge was adamant that Sirius was severely delusional and of course he was saying these things, but that was because he truly believed them. He had put forward an in depth study of Sirius' family and the proportion of its members that were both death eaters and those who were mentally ill or in Bellatrix's case both. The IWC member representing Germany had laughed in Fudges face and stated that individuals couldn't be judged on the actions of family members. Herr Reinhardt had also argued that Fudge hadn't included the members of Sirius' family that hadn't become death eaters or mentally ill and was therefore disproportionately representing Sirius. Reinhardt had then gone on to say if the minister wanted to bring his own prejudices to the defendant he could keep them quiet.

For now they would hide until the great unveiling which was scheduled to happen on the very last day of august when his god father had his ICW trial.

At the moment he was trying to convince Sirius that he wasn't hungry. The bacon sat upon his plate slowly cooling, the fat that had dripped off onto the plate, congealing. It made him want to be sick if he was honest with himself. Bacon reminded him of his Aunt and Uncle and the breakfasts that he had, had to cook for the family since he was six and the many burns he had accumulated over the years. Not to mention the time his Aunt had hit him with a still hot frying pan. At least the threat of Sirius and his Uncle becoming T-total had lessened the amount of chores that he had to do and the violence that was directed towards him. He pushed the piece of bacon around his plate, folding and his unfolding it with his fork. From under his fringe he could see Remus staring at him his amber eyes narrowed. It was starting to make his skin crawl.

"Harry if you're not hungry you don't have to eat it you know!" Sirius stated, whilst squeezing copious amounts of Hp sauce all over his large portion of bacon. Harry sighed and pushed his small plate further onto the table, he hated breakfast. Eating anything before nine or ten in the morning left him feeling queasy and who in their right mind ate bacon for breakfast unless it was all they had. He could hear the two adults arguing fiercely above his head in angry whispers. Instead of making him upset as they obviously feared it made him intensely amused on the inside and the corner of his mouth tilted upwards into a smirk. They certainly argued like an old married couple. He liked the way that they had told him that they basically didn't trust anyone and thought that they were out to use him, but that they had neglected to tell him that his Dad's best friends were an item. They probably thought he was going to freak out about it or something.

"Harry you don't want the bacon you have to at least eat your toast." Remus stated in a voice that gave him no misunderstanding that he wasn't being given a choice. If he didn't eat this really mingling piece of dead pig (who at the moment he was feeling really sorry for) then he would have to eat the toast mountain, that when they had placed it in front of him this morning, he'd thought it was to share between until they set their own plates down. Harry picked at it, eating the crusts first and then peeling the top from the bottom, eating it and then leaving the crunchy bottom bits on the plate till last. It was the way that he had always eaten toast when he had been lucky to receive it. The toast wasn't even nice toast, it was floppy and had barely started to toast, more like warm bread than anything else. Harry liked his toast burnt. At the Dursley's he had been given all the burnt pieces of toast. It didn't feel right to be eating it any other way, plus he liked crunchy things.

**A/n Yeah lots of information about how Harry likes his toast there for you. Just in case he pops round one morning. ****All hail the longest chapter posted for this story so far.**

**I hope you liked it**


	11. Gonna tear off all my skin

Chapter 11 gonna tear off all my skin

A/n: Hey people. Yeah this is a slightly rejuvenated chapter that made its first appearance in the original version of this story, but I hope you like it anyway. I couldn't bring myself to rewrite it as you know some of this is based on personal experience and yeah I have self harmed…It's much easier to write things from your own experiences and then expand upon them than it to just pull something out of the air.

**Warning: This chapter contains self harm and potentially triggering…stuff**.

Harry stood, much as they had left him some hours before, staring out of the grimy bedroom window out into the street below. Since they had gone he had not only magically locked the door, but he had pushed the dusty dark wood chest of drawers in front of it to. It would not do for someone to come unexpectedly, especially since they worried about him so much already. Turning slowly from the bleak view he padded softly towards his bed before reaching under it with a calmness that frankly scared him, knowing what he was about to do. Strangely the thought also soothed the bubbling emotions of the last year. Gently, almost reverently he pulled out the battered shoe box, bringing it into the dim light, before slowly opening it to reveal its contents. It had taken him a great deal of time to collect them without being found out by the Dursley's. Sitting down on the lumpy mattress covered in a red and gold quit cover, he lifted the smallest of the glinting objects from its home and held it in his hand. This was really going to happen and despite his mind telling him to stop, that there must be another way. His body said that it had to happen. It was the only way. He still couldn't tell anyone, what would they think of him, after all? That he had finally gone as nutty as a squirrel that's what they would think. How could he break it to them that Harry Potter, The-boy-who-lived spent the majority of his time, when not with others talking to people who weren't there. Couldn't possibly be there but yet they were for him. With the knife in his hand they had grown quieter and quieter, paler and paler until they had disappeared entirely. Obviously they didn't want to watch the show; Harry smiled one of the very few genuine smiles he had given in just over a year.

That last happy occasion had soon been blown apart. It had been in one of the tents that Mr Weasley had borrowed for the Quidditch world cup at the end of his third year. He had been dreaming about playing Quidditch for England in the future and then the death eaters had attacked. Harry thought that it may have been that night, that all of these foreign feelings and the voices had come from. All he knew was that after that night in the graveyard and Cedric's death it had gotten much worse. Though he couldn't really remember living without the voices and the weird sights that he had seen over the past year. They kept him company through the lonely weeks he had to spend at his aunt and uncles house. They motivated him, told him that he wasn't a freak that they cared about him. Of course locked in his room there was no one to see him talking to them and no one to hear his voice? His Uncle had after all sound proofed his room so that none of them had to hear his freakish pet. They didn't react well to being woken up in the night by Hedwig. One of the only things that had stopped them from merely killing her had been his godfather's letter at the beginning of the holidays. Instead they had just left the country and left him with no food and no means in which to get it.

But here at Grimmauld and at Hogwarts he couldn't talk freely to them without people noticing. So he had tried to ignore them for as long as possible, only making them grow louder and louder until he couldn't take it anymore or he only moved his lips when conversing. This, though better than the previous idea and being easier to hide than actually talking to them still drew small amounts of unwanted attention. Harry sighed pushing up the leg of his pyjama bottoms, until his thigh was exposed, pale as the moonlight. Lowering his hands to rest the knife on his leg, he pushed gently at first gaining courage as time passed as he tried harder leaving a deep red indentation in his leg. Losing his bravery he raised the knife and returned it to the box and began to roll down the leg of his pyjama bottoms. A knock on the door startled him and he kicked the box under the bed, before running to the door, picking up his wand on the way. Hurriedly he pushed the chest of drawers back to its rightful place stirring up a great deal of dust before returning to the door and removing the locking charm. Opening it cautiously he caught sight of the retreating back of his God father walking down the corridor.

"Sirius!" he shouted attempting to catch up with him, before he got to the stairs. The closer he got the more depressed his godfather looked, his hair hung limply around his face and his strong shoulders were sagged with a look of defeat. At the sound of his voice Sirius immediately whirled round to face him, quickly pasting a happy smile onto his face that didn't quite reach the stormy grey eyes. That's right Harry sighed mentally we're all telling lies.

"Harry," His godfather stated in surprise, obviously not expecting him to emerge from his bedroom, or his lair as he and Remus were now calling it t. It was true, that he seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time in their reading, listening to music, anything really to quieten the voices all around him. Indulging himself here and there with a few minutes of conversation with Finrod or discussing the fall of the Noldor with Manwe and how it could have been prevented. Harry admitted to himself, he couldn't recall at the exact moment how long it had been since he had left the room for anything but to use the bathroom or to sneak foods from the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning. "We need to talk you and me and Remus." His godfathers face had sobered and for a few seconds Harry panicked. They couldn't know, could they? Someone was spying on him; he knew it, but how. In the panicked state he was in Harry didn't catch the worried look that Sirius gave him at the increased rate of his breathing. Cautiously the older man leaned forward, brushing a lock of hair away from his face before heading down the rickety stairs. Stopping at the first step he turned back and beckoned Harry to follow him with a long finger, in way that showed that this wasn't a request. It was an order.

A/n I've decided that, after this massive thing is done I might do some gap fillers. After all there are some pretty impressive holes in this time frame Suggestions on what you would like, would be nice Also on a more serious note i'm sorry for the gap in updates i've not exactly had a great time lately, the less said about it the better.

...raven...


	12. Confrontation

Chapter 12 Confrontation

All the staircases in Grimmauld place were long, winding and very narrow, not allowing two people to pass one another very comfortably. This sort of situation could have caused a lot of jostling last thing on a night and first thing on a morning with people going up and down the stairs if there were more people in the house. For all that it was August, and the height of summer, the inside of the house that Sirius had inherited carried an unearthly chill about it, defying all attempts to warm it up. When employed unenviable job of trying to make the house habitable to live in the trio were literally at war with the house. Furniture that had been fixed had suddenly broken mysteriously, things went missing and the odd accident occurred. The most annoying thing to his godfather was that he couldn't remove the portrait of his mother from the downstairs hallway. With each passing day he seemed to grow more and more likely to carry his threat of a week earlier, to blow up the wall on which she was mounted. Remus had laughed when this had been declared on a Monday morning a week ago when Walburga Black had been disturbed five times before breakfast. Following Sirius down the stairs, through the dark halls lit only by the pale light cast by gas lamps, mounted upon the walls, was daunting. He did not want to say anything to disturb the silence, but then again for him, it wasn't silent, nor was he alone in what felt like the walk to his death. Beside him tall and mighty, wearing fine mail and armour, stood a common intrusion into his world. Finrod looked Harry deep in the eyes before smiling reassuringly and beckoning him on, into the kitchen. Sitting at the long kitchen table was Remus, his heavily scarred hands holding a piece of parchment and his expression stony. The letters corresponding envelope was laid on the long narrow kitchen table. Seeing his mentor's expression Harry paled and began to shake slightly, but once again Finrod beckoned him forward, taking a seat across from Remus.

"Harry, you know that they would not hurt you, and that they do not know about us." Finrod stated, taking out his sword from its scabbard and beginning to sharpen it with a stone. Harry nodded slightly calming down. Sirius moved to sit next to the lycanthrope, looking at him with a face that gave none of his feelings away and pointing to the seat across the table. The scruffy teenager moved across the room slowly, trying to delay the inevitable, but eventually he found himself in the straight backed, uncomfortable chair. Unconsciously lowering his head to evade the stares of the two adults that he cared about in the world Harry didn't see the annoyed, yet worried looks that they had given him.

"Harry, I think that you know why we are here." Remus stated quietly, leaning back in his chair and placing the well read letter back into its envelope, before placing it onto the table. The green eyed teen found himself looking up for a moment, into his mentor's eyes, before turning his gaze downwards again. Finding himself beginning to panic, he started to pat his leg with his right hand, slowly at first, but as the silence grew longer, the speed increased. "Your end of year report came by owl today. All of your teachers seem to be very worried about you, and your grades have slipped considerably. Have you actually been trying?" Remus accused, his body tensing and his eyes flashing amber momentarily, before returning to their normal non-descript brown.

"What's been going on? You know you can tell us don't you?" Sirius asked with a considerable amount of hurt in his voice. Okay they were going to play good cop bad cop today Harry winced, as he felt tears rising. He had tried, he had done his best. It was just that he found it very hard to concentrate with a group of elves rampaging through his life at generally inappropriate times. That and the fact that even when they weren't around thinking tended to be like wading through treacle and no-one ever gave him the time to figure things out on his own. There was of course no way that he would ever tell them this, everyone already thought that he was a weirdo. After all he could speak parseltongue and had survived Voldermort trying to kill him multiple times already.

"You wouldn't understand!" He whispered, standing up slowly from his seat. It took all his effort not to run from the room.


	13. Sirius

Chapter 13 Sirius

A/N: Thanks go to crazyme03, BadWolf95, Dancing-Time-Witch-Vampiress, Pelowskin and doxiesmum14 my wonderful reviewers.

Both of them were beginning to get very worried about Harry. Even Sirius had noticed that there was something wrong with him and he was usually quite oblivious when it came to important things. It was starting to become glaringly obvious that there was something really wrong. At the start of his stay at Grimmauld Sirius had passed off his behaviour as typical teenage stroppiness and the lasting affects that being at the Dursley's had had upon his best friends child. Now, he didn't know something about it rubbed him the wrong way. Those close to Harry knew that he could brood but this was a whole new level that frankly had begun to scare them. The only times in which he was seen were late on a night when he came down to stock up on food. Remus had taken to leaving him his dinner on the side with a heating charm on it so at least they knew he was eating something. Whenever they managed to get him down for a meal he would merely look queasy and refuse to eat.

The happy, somewhat shy boy that they all knew had retreated into the shell he now lived in was a mockery of what he had once been. A large part of Padfoot had been all for marching up the stairs and dragging him out of his bedroom, forcing him to face his life. It was needless to say that he hadn't. This plan of action would almost certainly be detrimental for Harry. Both men had suffered considerably in their lives and knew that something like this was bound to happen eventually. Harry was very good at keeping his feelings inside, bottling them up until he couldn't hold it in anymore and it exploded out of him. Whatever this problem was, it was big, and he hadn't even talked to Ron and Hermione about it. Throughout the last year he had cut out his friends from his life one by one until there were only his two closest friends left. Currently he wasn't able to talk to them and probably wouldn't see them until the start of school. Now he had taken to locking himself in his room and refusing to come out for anyone. It killed Sirius little by little to see the smile that Harry had been showing everyone. The smile that had never reached his eyes. Looking back Sirius couldn't even remember the last time that his godson had showed anyone any real emotion. He had taken to walking early to keep an eye on Harry, but whenever they passed in the corridors or staircases, Harry had seemed to be in another world and had walked right past him.

To say that he was worried was an understatement. This worry had deepened with the arrival of Harry's end of year report. It hadn't read ell. All of his grades were slipping and the essays that he had given in had mostly been late, with pieces missing and the content had been all over the place i.e. hard to understand. That wasn't like Harry at all. Sure he wasn't as academically minded as Hermione and the tournament had taken up a great deal of time last year. But he cared about his future and he knew that his schoolwork was important. Remus had started to think that maybe the Dursley's had been doing more than neglecting him this summer. Or that maybe Harry was better at hiding things than they had previously thought. The dog animagus growled low in his throat.

It had taken half an hour for Remus to convince his lover that he needed to confront Harry about his behaviour and his report scores. Sirius still thought that it was a bad idea. Still he hoped that Harry would still be awake and that he would at least give him a chance. Reaching the door to his godson's room he began to feel nervous, he carefully knocked on the door after sensing the impressive wards that had been created and placed on the door. They were nothing that he had ever come across; this was strange as he had become an auror during the last war. They had spent weeks learning every single ward that Mad-eye Moody knew of back in the old days. The ones that had been constructed outside of Harry's door were either incredibly obscure or homemade. They seemed to be strong enough not to collapse or cause any serious damage, so h e decided to leave them alone. After waiting for a couple of minutes he turned away from the door and set of beck towards the kitchen it seemed that Harry didn't want to see him.

Before he could reach the stairs Harry had ran out of his room calling his name, whilst running along the corridor. Turning to take a good look at his best friend's son he was shocked to see how terrible he looked. Skinny arms and legs could be seen despite his baggy pyjamas and dark circles lay under his eyes. It was obvious that he hadn't been sleeping properly or even not at all. The sheer look of bone tiredness that seeped from him was reminiscent of Remus after a full moon. What skin that Sirius could see that his skin was pale due to the low amount of sunlight that he was getting. The skinniness that was not only genetic (his father had always been skinny) but seemed to be aggravated by his stay at the Dursley's and now by his not eating.

The meeting that had taken place between them all had given no-one any more information than they had already had before. It seemed that Harry was not able to talk to them for whatever reason he had. Leaving his mentors with even deeper worries than previously. Gently he placed his head on the table in defeat. He jumped slightly as he felt the hands of his lover rubbing up and down his back, trying to bring some kind of comfort to him. Turning around in his seat, he held out his arms for a hug. Understanding his need for closeness and comfort Remus took him into his arms and held on tightly. The long friendship that they had shared as well as their relationship gave them a good insight into each other's lives and thoughts. This had given Remus the important knowledge that Sirius had never liked being out of control and he hated not having the full picture. Earlier events had showed that Harry wasn't someone who could trust others easily, trying to find out what was going on was going to take time.

A/N: Yeah hi everyone i hope you liked the chapter. I'm sorry for the wait, and my little rant that i had about toast last time. My sister has a habit of only putting the toast in on the first setting and it really annoys me for some reason. That's not toast it's just warm bread. Here i go again XD


	14. Rip apart all my insides

Chapter 14 Rip apart all of my insides

Warnings: Self harm, panic attacks and hallucinations

After putting on a calm face as he left the kitchen, Harry started to feel his anxiety take over. A big black cloud that tightened around his chest, forcing his heart to beat faster and his breath to become laboured. At this rising feeling of absolute panic he ran up the stairs, back to the safety of his bedroom. His haven, nothing could enter here without his permission. Nothing! Finrod had followed him up the stairs, his chain mail clinking softly as he took wide steps to keep up with his frenzied rush, whispering phrases meant to calm him down. Reaching his room, he slammed the door shut, before pushing the chest of drawers back in front of it. Even in the few seconds that he had been in it the small quite dingy room was already starting to provide him with a small sense of comfort. The effort of heaving the heavy wooden construction from its original space had left him panting slightly.

Before him Finrod gradually began to fade out of existence, with a sad smile upon his glowing face. The loss of his friend and protector left Harry feeling lost and vulnerable. Once again, he reached below his bed to draw out the box beneath it. Just as the last time that he had gone through these motions a sense of calmness had overcome him. The continuous buzzing around him grew quieter, and then slowly disappeared. Opening it slowly, cautiously as if something precious and delicate lay within its confines, he exposed the contents. Little by little he drew out the knife that he had used in the effort prior to this one. He hiked up his trouser bottoms until his thigh was visible. Harry drew a deep breath clutching the handle tighter within his small hands before drawing the knife across his skin. Relief, glorious relief and quiet. The pale skinned seeker dropped the knife in shock as his blood beaded on the surface of his skin. Reaching back into the box he pulled out a wad of tissue pressing it into the injury with a smile upon his face. He could cope, yes he could. It didn't matter that Remus and Sirius had noticed that something was wrong they had no idea what it was. He could cope on his own. After all hadn't he gotten through the past year on his own hadn't he? It was him who had faced Voldermort repeatedly with only the help of Ron and Hermione and whatever gods were looking after him.

The bleeding had stopped, and so he carefully pulled off the tissue so as not to take of the scab that had started to form. Harry scrunched it up into a ball and threw the bloodied tissue into the bin beside his desk. The knife was retrieved from the floor and wiped before being returned to its home. There was no way that he was risking getting an infection just because he had used a dirty knife. Roughly the battered box was pushed back under the bed after it had had once again been closed.

The sky outside his window had started to pale with the promise of the morning and another painfully hot summer day. Suddenly tired Harry pulled down his pants leg and surrendered to the tantalizing world of sleep but even there he was not alone. Not anymore.

Two hours had passed since he had finally found some sleep, but a creeping feeling of dread had crept over him slowly. Eventually he could no longer stay lying down. His heart had begun to pound erratically in his chest, contributing a sense of dizziness and acute awareness to his fear. It was this combination of emotions that continuously kept him alive in his confrontations with Voldermort. It was a feeling not unlike the last time he had faced his arch nemesis. Panting slightly he groped behind him in an attempt to find his wand, but it must have fell off the bed during the time that he had been asleep. Eventually he gave up his search and walked over to his bedroom door, flicking the switch that was placed near to it. The light making him blink because of its brightness. Looking up towards his ceiling he caught sight of a mass of black wires that sparked like electricity as it buzzed around the room. A feeling of great malevolence surrounded it, giving him the shudders. Spotting his wand, he made a dive for it, but so did the strange vision. He muffled a scream as it wrapped itself around him, clouding his vision. A deep sinister voice echoed from all round him telling him all the things that he had feared to be true telling him things that would ever scar him.

His heart felt like it was beating within his skull and his chest had begun to tighten. It felt as if his Cousin Dudley was sat upon his chest and considering that he weighed approximately the same amount as a baby whale that was saying something. Harry struggled to breathe, the breaths that he was taking came in shallow wheezes and his stomach felt as if someone was using it to wash up in.

Panicking further he reached for the iPod that Hermione had bought and charmed for him for his birthday last year. He was eternally grateful for it, because it had become a lifeline that helped him to get through the day. When the voices became too loud he could escape into the world that his music created. This was a world where he could let out his fear, anger and sadness, where he could be Harry and not The-Boy-Who-Lived. It was one of his guilty pleasures along with a good thick fantasy novel. In the past year he had gotten through an amazing number of books, Hermione would be proud of him. The entire Redwall series had fallen to his sudden need to read, Lord of the Rings, the Silmarillion, the Hobbit and so many more. When he had been staying at Private drive over the summer he had exhausted the local library's selection of books (as well as those that Hermione had purchased for him) that interested him and had started reading books, that when attempting to read them, made him feel as if he was banging his head against a brick wall. Mansfield Park it seemed would remain the bane of his life for quite a long time; the damn book was even more annoying than Voldermort. But one day he would conquer it he knew it, till then he would expand the genres that he had interests in. The music and the reading helped him to wage a two pronged attack on the voices that were slowly taking over his life. The music almost always helped him to drown out the sound and the books provided a visual distraction from Finrod, Glorfindel and Arafinwe.

Today it wasn't helping in the slightest with this new problem that he had for some unknown reason named Alistair. The creature hadn't spoken a word so far as he could tell, but it exuded dark feelings and he knew that its very presence in the room was bad. Somehow on some level he just knew that this was Alastair. Harry fervently hoped that he would not have to go through this again.

The darkness surrounded him, amplifying every noise that was made in the house to a painful level. Harry shivered pulling up his quilt so that he was fully covered at least this way he couldn't get in. By the light of his wand his potion text book was illuminated softly so that he could read it. Here under his protections he was safe, no-one could get to him, and no one could hurt him. What he was hiding from he had absolutely no idea but he knew that if he was found something very bad would happen. The dark had never really scared him, like it had other children until now. Years of being locked in the cupboard under the stairs had seen to that. During the long time that he had been locked away from the world the darkness had become his friend rather than the enemy that others had thought it to be. The words began to dance before his eyes and he had long since ceased to care what happened when you added powdered bicorn horn to desiccated newts eyes on a full moon. Of course he knew that it ended in a massive explosion, but at the moment the threat of Alistair returning was very high. The darkness almost always brought him out to 'play' with Harry. Not every day, but often enough to keep him in an almost constant state of fear. He hadn't left his room at all for two days, so strong was this new feeling. The very thought of leaving and having to face everyone else outside of this shelter that he had built for himself had sent him into a panic attack in the early hours of yesterday morning. In the darkness, underneath his bedclothes he panted, beginning to sweat profusely and to pant in the suffocating small space. His whole body began to shake uncontrollably and bile slowly began to rise in his throat. Being utterly frank with himself, he didn't know how long he could stand this anymore. In the corner of the room a dark shape hovered, made up of thick black smoke with spiky tendrils, from this 'body' three foot long tentacles flailed, coming for him. They were trying to reach him, to enter his ear because that way they could enter his brain and take control of his body. Harry fully abandoned his book and jammed a finger into each ear. It wasn't going to happen he couldn't let it. The fear had grown to such a level that he found himself crying in desperation. He couldn't get out of the room because Alistair was nearer the door than he was and could easily move in the way of it. His heart was beating so rapidly that he could feel the artery in his neck throbbing. Why wouldn't Alistair leave him alone?

A/n A little gift to you the readers for the gap i've left between updates.


	15. Anxiety

Chapter 15 Anxiety

A/n: Hey there a new chapter. Things will be much faster from now on. I've got my Uni offers, XD and i've finally written this whole story out. 

Harry was sat in one of the many lounges that existed within his Godfathers house, sorting through the many items that had been handed down through the years into two piles. One for those things which they would keep and another for the stuff that was being thrown out. The latter category was considerably larger than the first, containing many items that were broken beyond magical repair, were incredibly creepy, dangerous or wouldn't look out of place in the Malfoy's home. Harry shrugged, considering that Lucious Malfoy was a death eater and that Narcissa was one of Bellatrix's sisters there was no need to wonder why the dark magical items would have made them feel more at home. There had been a few incidents involved in the cleaning of the house. These included a pair of purple dress robes that had once belonged to Orion Black flying out from the wardrobe in which they had been stored for the last seventeen years before attempting to strangle Remus. He would rather be in this dusty dark room than downstairs in one of the few rooms they had managed to clean properly were Sirius had managed to set up a wireless and a television. It was down there that the three of them had spent the majority of their time over the last week. But at the moment Harry didn't want to be near anyone, he needed isolation. Something in his life that was almost non-existent. At Hogwarts someone was with him wherever he went and at the Dursley's well the neighbors would constantly watch him from behind their net curtains and Finrod never left him alone. Here was better, there were less people tramping through his life and it was so much quieter than before. Previously, the voices had been extremely numerous, sounding like a packed shopping centre, filled with chattering and screaming and… It was hard to take. Every extra noise that occurred outside of this was at least twice as loud and higher pitched. When his Aunt had screamed at him to get out of the car when they had arrived home from the station at the beginning of the holiday, he had, had to fight the urge to slap her to shut her up. Then noises had started to become painful and he flinched and withdrew himself from them so that he didn't have to deal with it. Pain like shards of glass being pushed into his ears and brain that was what someone taking to him had become.

When he was sat with Sirius and Remus his levels of anxiety would rise and he had to fight the urge to start tapping or doing something repetitive to calm himself down. His heart would race and a feeling would lodge itself in his stomach. One that said that he had to get out of there. He would annoy his ex-teacher by getting up every five ten minutes and walking out of the room and pacing up and down the corridor outside. He just couldn't concentrate on the program for any longer period of time at the moment.

...raven...


	16. Food

Chapter 16 Food

A/n: Yay another chapter for you all. I'm nearing the end of my college curse and so I have quite a bit of coursework that needs to be completed. Luckily I don't have any exams to do. This means that updates may be few and far between but rest assured I have written the whole story up! Hope you enjoy.

**Warning: Potentially triggering thoughts about food, self harm and suicide as well as actual self harm and character death (suicide).**

"Harry have you seen the pasta that was in the fridge?" Remus called out from the kitchen of the previously dark and dreary house of Black. The 'spring clearing' was going well so far they had managed to clear the top two floors of the building. Unfortunately this happened to be the smallest part of the house the lowest floors were sprawling and even Sirius who had grown up in the house had no idea how large it was. A hundred years of occupation and adaptation had changed a simple two-up and two-down Victorian terrace house into a mansion albeit a decrepit one.

Harry pulled himself behind the sofa with the big bowl of food and a fork, stuffing it into his face, like a hobbit given early warning of a ten year long famine. It was a sense of desperation, he had to eat this, and Remus had said earlier on in the day that he was going to throw it out if no-one ate it. That would be wasting food. Harry had grown up without the privilege to do so and all food was revered like a holy object because he might not get any tomorrow. At Hogwarts and the Burrow he was safe in the knowledge that if he didn't eat what was on the table then someone else would. But here in his god father's house food that the three of them didn't eat was binned and that was sacrilegious to him. So now Harry was forcing down the pasta even though he had long stopped being hungry and his stomach was beginning to feel painful. In some strange way the fullness filled him in a way that was not only physical but also emotional. All the loneliness that he had ever felt in his life was being papered over by the pasta. Now he could really appreciate why Dudley had gotten himself into such a state as a child. This new feeling was great but at the same time he was feeling a deep sense of revulsion. He was disgusting so full and fat and he could practically feel the sugars and starches in the food turning into fat, but he soldiered on until there was nothing left in the huge bowl. He wiped his mouth with the back of his bony hand and climbed out from behind the sofa leaving the evidence behind. It would be retrieved later at a safer time. The black cloud he associated with Alistair tugged at the edges of his vision. Harry stifled a scream and ran back to his room, slamming the door behind him.

Once ensuring that the door couldn't be opened by the demon and that he couldn't get through the areas where the door didn't quite fit the frame correctly, Harry dove beneath his bed for the box that had started to become his best friend. The shine on the knives that were contained within tempted him greatly if only he could summon up the courage to use them. Long, sharp and honed perfectly they would be beautiful covered in his blood, but not now. Pushing them to one side he lifted out a small wooden box that he had found during the cleaning and taken a liking to. It had a geometric pattern painted on the lid and was perfect for storing the blades that he had pulled out of a packet of razors that he had bought at the local chemist. The pharmacist had been run off her feet and shouldn't have sold them to him he knew that. Harry was aware of the fact that you shouldn't be able to buy knives or other sharps unless you were over the age of eighteen and had an id card. Lying to her had made him feel terrible, like something slimy was crawling all over him. At this point he had been desperate to collect all the sharp things he could and safety store them away. This process had to be done carefully so that his relatives wouldn't notice the disappearance of things. For instance Harry couldn't have taken his uncles razors and used them because he would know. There was that and the fact he had no idea **where his uncle had been**, for all he knew the whale of a man could be riddled with disease and for once in his life the teen wasn't pushing his luck.

Opening the wooden box gently so as not to cause the blades to fly out, he searched for his favorite one. It was slightly bent from where he had levered it out from its protective casing and had three holes, where it had been secured. Harry wiped it with an alcohol based gel to kill any micro-organisms that had made the thin piece of metal home since the last time it had been used. It wouldn't do to get an infection. He rolled up his sleeve; it hurt much more to cut here, rotating it. The razor ran up and down his arm drawing a pattern rather like a feather into the flesh. It was this side of his arm that was safest to use, it didn't contain the large blood vessels that were so near to the surface but a small layer of fat it was also easier to hide. Cutting had become an addiction, Harry couldn't last a day without adding to the patterns that he had begun, couldn't cope without it. As long as no-one noticed his method of coping then it would go on. If he was serious about it for more than a few seconds, he could see that it was starting to spiral out of control. When he was at his lowest points, when the darkness was looking like it was going to take over Harry could sometimes find himself calmly, reverently dreaming about ways to kill himself. It would be so easy to just step out in front of an articulated lorry and be gone from this world. Although after a talk that he had, had last year with Seamus about his Dad's job he wouldn't kill himself in that way. Seamus' dad was a freight train driver and someone had stood in the tracks… There had been no hope of him ever being able to stop in time. **Freight trains ran at a hundred and fifty miles an hour** and because of the weight they were pulling it could take them **over three miles to stop**. The poor bloke on the tracks didn't stand a chance. Seamus' dad still had nightmares and he couldn't go back to work despite it being one of his passions.

An: This chapter is dedicated to the friends of my dad that drive trains and have hit people on the track and to my Dad who sometimes has to clean the trains down afterwards and test their brakes. Not a particularly great job.

...raven...


	17. Moony and Padfoot 2

Chapter 17 moony and Padfoot 2

An: And to you I give an insight into the relationship between our two favorite canines.

"Padfoot!" Remus shouted from the kitchen into the dining room. "Have you eaten those crisps I was saving for next week? You do know that your only supposed to eat three bags a week don't you?" He poked his head through the door that separated the kitchen from the dining room. Sirius sat at the table with a newspaper staring morosely into a bowl of cereal on the table in front of him. His healer in France had put him on a very restrictive diet so that he would gain the weight that he had lost whilst in Azkaban. There was lots of oily fish to make up for the damage that the dementors had done to his brain, iron rich foods like broccoli to ensure that he didn't develop anemia due to his regular animagus transformations. The diet basically contained a lot of good food, food that he had missed out on over the years, and Sirius knew that it was helping him to become more healthy, but like a petulant child he wanted burgers and chips and … He wasn't allowed them, because his heart was so fragile at the moment, there had been times during his incarceration where he had been so underweight that his body had started to convert muscle into fat. Luckily they had caught this fast otherwise he had been looking at heart attacks or strokes due to the weakened muscle fibers. To put it plainly the doctor had told him that if he didn't look after himself, he could and probably would die. Sirius knew that he had been lucky but you always want most the things that you are unable to have. Remus had been mothering him ever since that night in the shrieking shack. Every day when he woke up and looked in the mirror, he could see that he was aging. Another grey hair here and there, Moony was admittedly looking worse for wear they were old men now. The dog animagus didn't know what he would have done if he hadn't have had Remus.

For years at school he had watched him from afar barely hoping that the feelings that he had for one of his best friends would ever be returned. They had come out not long after the laws against homosexuality had been revoked and it had been a scary time. He and Remus had been one of the first couples in Hogwarts to be openly gay. Sure in the muggle world being gay had been decriminalized a few years earlier but prejudices within the Wizarding world took a lot longer to be righted. This could be seen by the amount of so called 'pureblood' families that existed in the world today that believed in blood purity, look where it had gotten them. Over the last hundred years the number of pureblood families had been dropping like stones into a lake. This was due to many things, such as high infant mortality, infertility and large proportions of the children being gay, lesbian, and transgender. Recently a young muggleborn woman had done a study of pureblooded adolescents and found that a much higher than average number thought of themselves as asexual, meaning that they were not interested in either sex. For those blood purists things were becoming pretty dire.

Both he and Remus had noticed that food was going missing throughout the house and had both surmised that it had been the other that had been raiding the cupboards at night. What with Sirius' restrictive diet leaving him craving for foods that he knew he couldn't have and Moony's chocolate addiction it was hard to not point the finger at one another. That had been until Remus had found the bowl of pasta that had gone missing a few days before wedged down behind one o the sofas. They had realized at that point that it had been Harry. Neither of them would have hidden the bowl, they simply would have washed it and put it away. At least he was gaining some weight when they had picked him up from the Dursley's house he had looked like a gust of wind would blow him over, but he had always been thin. Sure his father had been like a twig at a similar age but Harry well if they were honest with themselves…he looked ill. His skin which had always been pale, a gift from his auburn mother, was wan and sickly like he was recovering from some horrendous disease, eyes that usually sparkled were dull and empty and beneath them lay dark bags that proved that he wasn't sleeping properly.

The list of things that they were worried about in regards to harry was growing day by day and soon they knew that they were going to have to confront it.


	18. Isolation

Chapter 18 isolation

Warnings: Paranoia and anxiety (well you know what to expect by now)

The darkness was both his friend and greatest enemy, things were quieter at night, but he also ran the great risk of encountering Alistair. It was worth it at the moment. Harry couldn't physically stand being round his godfather and former teacher at the moment every noise that was made brought him physical pain. Every sound apart from music had become an enemy. Finrod stood at the end of his bed, leaning casually on the footboard. He was rebraiding his hair, in a complicated way, adding stone beads every now and again. The blond warrior had stated that these were an important part of his identity. All the warriors of Nargothrond had plaited their hair so; it was one of the ways that they used to identify bodies after a battle. At the very least the body would get to the right nation. Harry had to admit it was a pretty nifty idea, rather like the way in which world war two soldiers had to carry their identification papers in their breast pocket and every nation's uniform was somewhat different. It meant that maybe they wouldn't ever be given to their family, or have a name over their gravestone but …well they were remembered and could in a way go home. During one of these conversations Harry had told him all about the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Cenotaph in London. It was a tomb to a soldier that could not be identified. Whoever this man had been received full military honors and was escorted by a hundred soldiers that had received the Victoria Cross the highest award for bravery that Great Britain gave to its soldiers. He had been mourned by a hundred women who had lost their husbands and all their sons. It was something that those who had lost someone in the war and in subsequent wars could go to and mourn, for their loss. It was also especially important for those who never found out if their son, father, brother, husband was dead or alive. Finrod had been impressed at the show of respect and grief that thus had shown looking at Harry in a very odd way. Harry had then gone on to explain that this was because there hadn't been a family that wasn't unaffected by the war. Everyone had lost someone.

This was rather unlike the wars fought by wizards and sure wizards had been involved in both of the world wars and had in Grindelwald's case added fuel to a fire that had already been burning, but they hadn't lost quite as much. In the war with Voldermort, well it was hardly to be considered a war more like a large number of terrorist attacks followed by a ministerial manhunt that had never really achieved anything. Sure they had caught some of the minor players they had even some of the big shots but they hadn't done it alone. In fact when the attacks had been at their worst it had been the French and German auror troops that had done the vast majority of the work. Even now the ministry was yet to thank them for what they had done, what in some cases they had died doing. The war that seemed to be heading closer day by day was going to be a bloodbath. Harry knew this because no-one was prepared really for what was to come, not even the order.

Nightmares caused by Voldermort were plaguing him on top of everything and thus he had decided not to sleep it was easier to deal with things that way. He was not going to watch Tom Riddle and his cronies torture innocent muggles to death if he could help it. After the first night when he had awoken screaming he had cast a silencing charm upon his room. It was better that they didn't hear him, they would only ask questions and if Harry was completely honest with himself he doubted whether he was lucid enough at the moment to be able to answer them in any way that would make sense. Others might find it strange that even now the scrawny teenager had an amazing insight into how he functioned, but to Harry it was like he was seeing someone else's life through their eyes rather than his own. This left him with an incredibly strange feeling of being outside of his body and therefore a witness to everything that went on. He now had pretty much no control over his body and what it did. He was spending most of his energy keeping it together when he was around other people and so found himself forgetting to do everyday things such as shower every day, brush his teeth, brush his hair and he found himself not caring overly. Harry had crashed and now he was burning.

The only safe place within the house was this room, his room, where he didn't have to interact with anyone else and he found himself wishing this was what the rest of his life would consist of. Four walls a chest of drawers a desk, a rusting metal bin, a bed, a window and a locked door were all he seemed to want right now. What lay outside of them didn't matter anymore. Here he didn't have to live up to other people's expectations and he could corrode in peace.

A/n: Sorry for the long wait for the new chapter, that type 2 error thing. Yeah blame that :)


	19. When you rifle in

Chapter 19 When you rifle in

A/n: This was one of the hardest chapters that I have ever written for this fanfiction so far and I don't particularly like it at the moment but…

Sirius had, had enough! They hadn't even seen Harry for days and they knew that he wasn't eating because they had done a stock take after they realized that Harry was the one sneaking food. Nothing had been taken apart from what they had used themselves. Unless Harry had a hidden stash up there he wasn't eating and that thought terrified Sirius. Neither of them knew what to do anymore Harry wouldn't come down stairs, he probably wasn't eating and his behavior had been strange all summer. Things were getting desperate. Whatever ward variant Harry had placed upon his door was complex, but not unbreakable. With Sirius' training and Remus' knowledge of arithmancy they had managed to strip away a number of the outer layers without triggering any of the booby traps that were placed within them, but it was slow work. They had to be completely sure of everything in the counter curse so that it didn't not trigger the aforementioned traps of cause the whole thing to lock down. Slowly but surely they were getting there.

As they sliced through another layer Remus caught his eyes they were nearly through and now a further spell could be seen below the wards. If he wasn't mistaken it was a silencing charm of some power. He raised an eyebrow before shaking his head they would need to have a serious conversation with Harry once they made their way through. It was enough to know that his Godson didn't trust them and that something was potentially seriously wrong with him, but that he had found a way to block himself off from them almost completely was something that the dog animagus found heart breaking.

Once they had made it through the complicated web that Harry had erected around the door and had woven through the walls it was time to open the door. Remus insisted that they knock first as this was only polite which was in stark contrast to Sirius' plans to knock the door down using his own body as a battering ram. In the end Remus' logic won out and they knocked on the door. Nothing could be heard from within not even a floorboard squeak, this meant that the prematurely aging werewolf turned the knob on the door cringing as the door emitted a loud groaning noise. From the door way they weren't able to see Harry but they were able to see the room. The thick curtains were drawn over the window blocking out what little light that was able to penetrate the tiny plane of glass. On the walls various paintings and pictures could be found tacked on very precisely most constituting of patterns of some description others surreal drawings. It seemed as if everything that Harry owned was on the floor.

As they stepped into the room the frigid temperature became apparent and Sirius shivered drawing his jacket closer around him. On the bed a small lump protruded from the mattress and soft snores could be heard to come from it. The pair sighed, just as they had brought up the courage to address the strange behaviors Harry had finally fallen asleep. It had been at least a week since he had last slept. Carefully, minding the books that were on the floor, they withdrew. This wasn't the time. Harry needed all the sleep that he could get.


	20. The letter

Chapter 20 the letter

The next week found Harry returning to his self harming whenever he found things were becoming too vivid for him to cope with. Quickly adding more and more lines to his leg before moving to his arms because that hurt more and therefore brought him more relief. Logic had been thrown out of the window sometime ago and his mind had turned into a convoluted mess of twisting thoughts and shapes. It often felt like his head was filled with cotton wool. He didn't care anymore, at least that was what he told himself but to be truthfully honest, he cared too much. The radio buzz was becoming louder and louder and now Finrod was almost always accompanied with his father Arafinwe. On particularly bad days Glorfindel and Manwe would turn up for a couple of hours only to return when he was close to finding sleep. It was starting to feel as if he was riding on a rollercoaster towards something terrible and there was no way for him to stop the ride or for him to get off. To be frank it was terrifying, and he was getting to his last nerve. It felt as though he was going to do something both desperate and stupid. The situation wasn't helped in the slightest by the random thoughts that strolled through his head at all hours of the day and night. He would be using a knife to cut some bread and he would randomly start thinking of slitting his wrists with it or stabbing himself in the stomach with it. He couldn't even look at his potion ingredients or potion book anymore without fantasising about making poisons to use on himself. Harry was more worried about the way he could think about suicide in such a blasé way, as if… well as if he was thinking about buying some potatoes or what colour socks he was going to wear that day. These thoughts were purer than those he had earlier on. Stepping in front of an articulated lorry would be scaring for the person driving. It had taken Mr Finnegan a year to overcome his PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), though he still had flashbacks and nightmares. When he had returned to work he had stated clearly that there was no way on this earth he was ever going to drive that line again. Doing something like that would be selfish, he would be free but the poor soul that had been part of the act would be damaged. If he were to kill himself it would be in a way that caused as little fuss as possible, sure slitting his wrists would be messy, but there would be no witness. No-one would blame themselves for his death.

One night Harry decided that he had, had enough of hiding his problems away from everyone that he loved. The burden that he had been bearing in silence was beginning to pull him down and he didn't know if he could bear it alone anymore. Alistair's arrival into his life had terrified him much more than he was willing to let on, even to himself. It had kick started this spiral into the dark, before he had teetered on a tangible edge but now he was sinking in the quagmire This new found courage burned bright in his heart and in slight horror of the thought that it could fade at any moment. The desperation that had come along with it had pushed his mental awareness of everything around him into the most lucid state that he had felt in a long time.

This new found mental state found him sat in the house's library at four in the afternoon with a quill and several sheets of parchment trying to put into words how he felt to give to the two people in world that he trusted the most. It took eight hours of hard toil and several crumpled pieces of parchment that he was going to burn so that only one document existed of his issues. Now all he needed was to find even more courage to actually give it to Sirius and Remus. Harry was glad that he had written out what he wanted to say because it meant that he didn't actually mean that he had to speak. If he had, had to… well he didn't particularly want to think about it.

At this time of night everyone else but his godfather and his partner were in bed. He knew that they were worried about him and so they had adjusted their time to fit around hid erratic sleeping patterns and wanderings. It meant the world to him, that they cared enough about him to follow his weird life and to sacrifice their time for each other. It was a feeling that he hadn't really felt very much in his life. Sirius and Remus, though they couldn't really replace his biological parents he had started to think of them like parental figures. People who would always be there for him, put him first, who he could trust to catch him when he fell. Trust was something that was hard earned.

Harry stole down the stairs attempting to keep as quiet as possible so that, he didn't wake anything or anyone up. It really wouldn't do to fall or trip and wake Walburga Black. In the living room, or sitting room as it used to be known as, when the house had been filled with dark wizards, Sirius and Remus were playing Wizarding Chess on one of the small glass tables. Harry coughed and placed the letter on the table before bolting out of the door without so much as a glance backwards.


	21. Reactions

An: It's been a long time i know...

Chapter 21 reactions

Sirius blinked, not completely sure what had just happened. One minute Harry had been stood next to him with a look on his face that had frankly terrified him. Harry's eyes had been so full of fear and worry. It looked as if a tempest was raging inside of him; all his muscles had been taught like a bowstring ready to bolt at the first sign of danger. The teenager had bolted after practically throwing a piece of parchment at him and Remus. Remus looked at him, face muscles crunched in a look of intense worry, before bending down to pick up the parchment. Whatever was in it had obviously caused Harry a great deal of anxiety. Perhaps he had decided to tell them how he was feeling. Hands trembling slightly he opened the fold of the parchment to reveal the words written within. The lycanthrope smiled indulgently when he noticed that the letter was written in various different colours, from where Harry had started to write it, but had then left it and started with a new colour of ink.

"Shall I read it out loud do you think?" He asked leaning back in his seat and rubbing the back of his head softly, almost amber eyes piercing into Sirius's grey. Sirius nodded before standing up and casting several spells on the room. At his lovers bemused face, he smiled grimly.

_Hi Sirius and Remus,_

_I'm writing this letter to, I suppose try and explain what's going on with me lately. I know, that I've probably been acting really weirdly it's just that … I don't know this is really hard to explain without sounding completely crazy and everything. I guess it's mostly because I don't want to disappoint you and stuff. _

"Aw Harry you couldn't disappoint us if you tried you pilock. Remus I'm telling you now that boy is one funny onion." Sirius exclaimed breaking of Remus's reading of the letter. At his lovers upraised eyebrow he coughed and motioned him to continue with reading the letter.

_But maybe if I stop trying to skirt the problem this will be easier. I've… well I've got some problems that I have no idea how to fix. Well the thing is, the thing is that well… I keep seeing things that, rationally I know can't be there but they ARE. __I mean well I can't concentrate and I keep feeling really anxious for no apparent reason. _

"That last sentence or so is crossed out." Remus whispered moving to sit next to his lover pointing to the appropriate area of the missive.

_Yeah and it's kind of distracting when people others can't see keep chatting to you all day every day._

"I don't know what to do!" Sirius cried clutching at the lycanthropes shirt. He had never thought that something as serious as this could be wrong with the boy that he saw as a son. It was hard to believe that Harry was having hallucinations and that there was probably more going on than Harry was ever going to be willing to disclose to either of them. Harry just wasn't the sort of person that could trust others. Even his loved ones.

"We'll work this out love. We don't have any other choice!" Remus whispered into his ear tremulously, rubbing his hand up and down the firm back of his other half.

A/n: Ok erm… I'm none to good at explaining Sirius and Remus or their feelings. Rather like Harry I have problems imagining what other people are feeling so they do seem to be a bit flat . *SIGH* I have to try and think what it is that I would do in the situation, but if it isn't something that I have come across well… Anyway hope you like.


	22. The Healer

Chapter 22 The healer

Warnings: Panic attacks

This next step into finding some help, took more courage than anything else he had ever done before. Not even facing Voldermort or the Basilisk had been anything near to the horror he was feeling deep inside of himself. It settled in the bottom of his stomach and squeezed leaving him with a strong feeling of nausea. Little by little his chest tightened causing his breathing to grow incrementally shallower and shallower. This feeling further aggravated Harry's panic.

Sirius had told him to use the fireplace on the top landing, as it was the most private. His Godfather had also offered to guard the entrance to ensure that he would get the utmost privacy. You could never tell when Fred or George could try and use their extendable ears. Although the invention was brilliant and had been invaluable to the order for spying on death eaters and other unsavory characters but the twins had yet to understand how far they should take a joke. Someone almost always got hurt when the two of them were on the prowl. Of course they didn't mean to but now and then their moral compass became a bit wonky and they needed pulling up short of causing serious harm.

The walk to the crackling fire was akin to what he thought going to his own execution would feel like. It was something new that he was having to do, but also they would want to know his deepest darkest secrets. Harry knew that this had to be done for him to have any chance at living an ordinary life. Reaching deep down within himself Harry pulled out his courage strand by fragile strand until it reached the surface of his body. There was a reason after all that he had been placed in Gryffindor the house of the brave and chivalrous. He then reached out and took a handful of floo powder from an ugly glided ornamental vase that had been placed on the mantelpiece at some point. Glittering and green the magic powder shifted between his fingers like sand slowly falling onto the dark floor tiles and forming a pile. No doubt he wold have to clean it up afterwards to insure Kreatcher wouldn't stalk him for days muttering about how ungrateful he was.

Taking a deep breath in harry threw the precious powder into the fire changing its flames from a cheery warming orange to an eerie green. They reminded him of the flames that had been in the sconces within the Chamber f Secrets all those years ago. He wondered whether the person who had invented floo powder had been a Slytherin. Cautiously he leaned forward placing his head into the flames disturbingly gentle caress before shouting.

"St Mungo's!" A sickening feeling of his head spinning madly and his body remaining in its place came over him.

It wasn't long before an automated voice began its recorded message.

"Thank you for calling St Mungo's hospital of magical maladies and injuries if there is an emergency shout one. If you wish to make an appointment or collect test results shout two. If you wish to visit or inquire about a patient at the hospital shot three. If you would like to hear the options again shout four." At this the voice stopped and a strange buzzing noise began. Thinking over the choices that he had been given Harry shouted the second one that had been read out. "You are the second person in the queue." The voice replied before once again the buzzing noise returned. The wait was not particularly long only four or five minutes or so before a man's voice took over the buzzing.

"Thank you for calling ST Mungo's Hospital. What can I do for you?"Harry panicked slightly at being posed this particular question but tried to keep as level a tone of voice as possible.

"I'd like to make an appointment to see Healer Jones." Harry winced as his voice went up an octave or two. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest, fast enough that he was severely worried.

"What's the name? And its Healer Jones you specifically want?" The deep voice asked calmly.

"Harry Potter and yes he's the one I want to see."

The appointment that he ended up getting was at half past eight the next morning.

Harry was shaking from head to foot as he pulled himself out of the fireplace and Glorfindel being the immature elf he was, was cheering whilst jumping up and down.

They flooed from Grimmauld Place's kitchen fireplace to the hospital and although the journey only took two or three minutes, it felt like a lifetime to Harry. Time seemed to be stretching out lengthening obscenely; giving him more and more of it in which he could panic.

Sirius signed him in at the reception as he seemed to have lost the ability to speak and Remus took his arm gently, rubbing his back as he led him to the waiting area. Harry remembered the waiting area from previous trips to the hospital. When they turned the corner they saw that the space filled with rows of plastic padded chairs and a toy area was uncommonly empty. Usually the waiting area was overflowing with people waiting to see the healers but today it was eerily empty. Not even the people wanting blood tests had arrived yet. Of this he was particularly glad. There would be no one to stare at him and to whisper and speculate why he was here in the hospital. Resolutely he stared at the fish tank across the room sitting stiffly in his seat trying not to think about Remus touching him. A goldfish was swimming lazily between the fronds of water weed and under the bridge of the ornamental stone castle that lay to one side of the tank. His heart was beating a hundred miles an hour within his chest and a strange tightness had settled in his chest and throat. It felt as if someone was both sat upon his chest and choking him. Despite battling the urge, he failed and began to frantically tap his leg with his left hand. Sirius and Remus exchanged looks over the top of his head.

He had been called in early. As he walked down the corridor that led to the consultation room, he folded and unfolded a piece of paper that he had brought with him. On the paper in various colours of pen and in almost illegible handwriting were prompts for him to use in the meeting. Knowing that he would probably be panicking significantly during the meeting and that his head often felt like it was filled with cotton wool, Harry had decided to write a list of prompts about his problem so that he would remember them whilst with the doctor. Lately he had developed the amazing ability to forget things very easily. It wasn't long before he was stood outside a pale wooden door; upon the door was a silver plaque with the name HEALER JONES etched into it. Stepping forward he knocked upon the door.

Healer Jones called out and asked him to enter. Slowly, ever so painfully slowly Harry opened and then swung open the door it creaked slightly on its hinges as it opened. The healer was sat at his desk writing something down on a piece of parchment, but looked up as he entered the room.

"Would you please take a seat?" Mr. Jones asked gesturing to a maroon cushioned chair, next to the wooden desk piled with papers. Shaking like a leaf Harry walked further into the room turning briefly to close the door, before sitting stiffly in the offered chair. He could feel the lump in his throat acutely; he had no idea how he was going to do this. "Well Mr. Potter it certainly has been a while since we last saw one another." Healer Jones stated, pushing his square framed glasses further up his nose with a long thin finger, whilst smiling at him in a way he seemed to deem encouraging, but only made Harry worry about disappointing him. Healer Jones had been his parent's healer and his when he had been a very small child and despite the time the teenager had spent in the muggle world he had remained his family doctor. Now he was in semi retirement and was particularly hard to get hold of, if you wanted to see him you had to wait at least a week to do so. Though apparently not if your name was Harry Potter. Upon re-entering the magical world, Hagrid had taken him for his inoculation against Dragon Pox and that was where they had met again. Harry liked this man because he didn't faun over him like the vast majority of the Wizarding world was prone to doing. That, and the fact that they had known each other since before he was born endeared him greatly. If only there was a way in which to give this attitude to everyone else. Healer Jones was like a friendly Uncle that you could tell anything to and he wouldn't be upset with you. He knew the real Harry and so he was someone that Harry trusted would believe him about what he had to say.

The healer picked up the magical scroll that contained all the illnesses that Harry had come to the surgery with and the medications that he had been given to cure them. It was very short. Harry didn't like coming if he could help it and he would never permit a full scan to happen the Goddess only knows what he would find. He had managed for years without any medical aid he could do so now.

"Yeah erm…" Harry looked down at the piece of paper that he had brought with him on it was written everything that he wanted to say. He had a tendency to forget things when he was anxious, sometimes his voice slurred which was embarrassing and made him not want to talk afterwards. "I've been having these really weird moments were I can't remember what I've done and I keep hearing things and seeing stuff… It's really freaking me out." He screwed up his eyes and concentrated on folding and unfolding the piece of paper and bouncing his knee up and down. There was no way that he was looking up at the doctor he didn't want to see his face.

"Harry," The healer started running a hand through his short black hair and glancing back at the enchanted scroll. "This is quite serious. Let me test something ok?" Healer Jones stood up and walked over to the cupboards at the side of the room, washing his hands in the sink. He picked up his wand and set off back towards Harry. "Would you keep your eyes open for me Harry?" Then he leaned over him setting a complicated Lumos on his wand that constituted a narrow beam of yellow light which he then shined into the scruffy teenagers eyes from different directions for a few moments before sighing and sitting back down. The light had been bright and stung the Boy-Who-Lived's eyes for a few moments he blinked quickly. "I carried out that test to ensure that you were not suffering from a brain tumor. If there was a growth in your brain, it would cause the skin at the back of your eye sockets to bulge but luckily that has not happened." The healer turned to him, looking at harry in a way in which he could not decipher. "I'm going to refer you to a Psychiatrist!"

A/n: A little faster than last time :) I'd love to see some reviews ;)


	23. On the way home

Chapter 23 On the way home

Harry walked out of Healer Jones' office with a questionnaire he had to fill out and return to the secretary before he left. It had questions like 'Have you ever thought about killing yourself?' He shuddered these were pretty invasive. In Harry's opinion it was like asking someone whether you could look through their knicker draw. When he finally found himself at the reception desk he saw Remus and Sirius making their way towards him. In a panic the green eyed teen filled the questionnaire in with exceptional speed, not stopping to think about his answers, just going with his gut feeling. Usually he would have thought through the possible reactions answering them in a certain way would have meant. Unfortunately he didn't have that luxury at the moment. As soon as the questionnaire was finished with harry passed it over to the receptionist who smiled before putting it in his file.

At this point Remus and Sirius were upon him. Harry blushed and started walking towards the swing door that lead back out into the main hospital. It wasn't long before they caught up with him though and tried to prise information out of him about what happened during the consultation. Harry didn't particularly want to talk about it. He was going to see a psychiatrist that was something that he had ever experienced before. It would be scary and he had no idea what it was going to be like. At the moment he was trying to decide whether the life that was going to be born of this decision to tell would be worth the emotional torture it was going to cost him. As they made it into the atrium Harry pulled the sleeves of his shirt down further, one of the cuts that he had made the night before was on his wrist and thus was proving hard to cover. If his watch still worked it would be good for covering it, but it had been damaged by the water of the second task last year. It had taken him a couple of months to separate himself from it. He found it really hard to leave behind things.

"So Pup how did it go?" Remus asked putting a hand on his shoulder and pulling him closer as they walked past a large plant with purple waxy flowers. Harry blushed he wasn't used to anyone display affection towards him and especially not in public.

"I have to see a Psychiatrist." Harry whispered his voice quavering slightly as he nuzzled his head up against Remus' woollen jumper. It was soft and blue, which was one of his favourite colours though not as nice as green.

A/n: One more chapter left for you!


	24. Bye Bye

**A/N: Ahhh the end of an era. I'll be sad to see the end of WITD it's been with me for so long now it's kinda unbelievable. It's also the longest story that i've wrote so far. My new story Mariposa (shameless self plug) looks to be much longer though. I've learned a lot writing this. For example writing whilst acutely mentally ill doesn't always mean that you'll end up with a plot that makes any sense. **

Chapter 24 Bye Bye (time jump)

Warnings: Suicidal thoughts, self harm, disturbing thoughts 

Harry had just returned from what had been surprisingly the last of his sessions with his psychiatrist. He felt really strange kind of like someone had pushed him overboard a ship into the sea. Whilst he had been going to the sessions he had been a good boy. He hadn't cut the whole time, mainly because he had never actually told her that he had self harmed and didn't want to get found out and also because he didn't want to disappoint her. Too bad that she had disappointed him. Some of the things that she had said to him during that last session still smarted. She had asked him questions like 'What do you think we should do now?'. How the hell was he supposed to answer that question. He had frozen, unable to say anything and in the end chose an answer that he thought would please her. Turned out it wasn't the right one though. She had discharged him. After everything that he had said to her in some cases he had laid his soul out bare and was just becoming to trust her and now… Damn he didn't want to leave. He had told her that he didn't consider himself to have any friends how useless he was. How it was nice to have someone to talk to. The psychiatrist had practically thrown it back in his face by saying that.. Well in Harry's mind it had meant that he was wasting her time and the 'very' valuable time of the mental health wing. Right there and then he had almost broke out into tears_. _

Thankfully he had arrived home before that happened and had locked himself in his room. The insides of his arms itched ached the veins pulsing wanting to be cut, needing to be cut. He should give in and end it. Disappear it wasn't as if anyone cared they had shown that today. He didn't want to die, but Alistair had been waiting for him as soon as he had opened the door to the room. This time he appeared as a shadow of a tall man. Though he didn't have a face Harry could tell that he was smiling that terrible smile that made Harry's skin crawl. It had taken a while to understand Alistair's motives but now he understood. Sobbing he threw himself at the bed and grabbed two handfuls of the bedsheet until his knuckles turned white. Why did nothing ever work out for him? God hated him he decided it wasn't if he was asking for much. He didn't want money or property or holidays in exotic places he just wanted one person who would stand beside him and who he could actually feel safe about knowing his inner deepest darkest thoughts. He was a freak he didn't deserve it hadn't he learned that time and time again. At primary school he had had no-one, his friends at Hogwarts were at best fair-weather friends and he had no-one else. Remus and Sirius he just couldn't afford to let them down they wanted him to do his best. What if this was all he could do? What if all he would accomplish in life was to be this? Burning, oh he was burining now, with no hope of being extinguished. All the good behavior he had shown was going to be thrown out of the window. It was Harry time now.

Why hadn't he been able to just open his mouth and say the things that he wanted to say? He'd never mentioned Alistair to anyone nor the fact that he had been self harming. Or the other people that would sometimes wander in and out of his life. To begin with even he could tell that none of that sounded sane. How could he even begin to talk about something like that? "Oh yeah and there's Alistair a guy that appears as a black cloud who's trying to get to my brain via my ear possess me and then force me to kill myself." Yes that sounded perfectly sane didn't it. It was hard for Harry to talk at all he preferred the silence and during the times when he hadn't spoken for some considerable time it was very daunting to have to speak. According to her he was inbetween borderline Autistic (Asperger's syndrome), Schizophrenic and Schizoid and that it was his personality… It seems that to get any help at all you had to fall in a distinct category. Yesterday Remus and Sirius had taken him with them when they went food shopping at the local supermarket. If he remembered correctly it was an Asda. A revelation had occurred that had shook him to the core. Upon seeing a lorry his first thought had been to step in front of it… and to let it hit him. What was scarier was that he had been completely calm. It was as if he was deciding whether to buy a new pair of socks or some potatoes. That had been the first time that he had thought about killing himself and now it had come a bit of an obsession. His fear of death and lack of belief in an afterlife was all that was holding him back from doing was something that he had vowed to himself that he would never do. Harry would keep going on feeling ugly, useless, pathetic...It was he mused a pretty masochistic thing. After all being alive was causing him pain, pain that in the end was proving to him that he was still alive. Death was not an answer to this what ever it was that he was going through no matter how nice it sounded to finally get away from things. What would his parents have to say to him. How could he put Remus and Sirius through that. If he did kill himself it would be in a way that wouldn't leave too much of a mess behind for the living to clean up. Stepping in front of a vehicle would be selfish after all, the poor driver... Harry could understand the pull of a place of safety, somewhere it would all end, quietness that caused people to end it all.

In a way it all balanced out in his head there were the good days and the bad. He could cope he could cope with anything and he wouldn't be trusting adults again.

**A/n: Not an ending that people were probably hoping for but as I said in the beginning these are my experiences with a mental health problem and my Psychiatrist was scary and opinionated. And like Harry is feeling right now I didn't want to go and see someone again and have to explain that I'd lied to her about how I was feeling , nor have to open up my soul again. Just meeting someone else and having to schedule the appointments in a way that didn't arouse my parents suspicion was pretty anxiety attack inducing. They're not the most open minded of people especially my mother.**

**As i said above this is based on personal experience and i wouldn't want to put people off seeking help if it is something that they need. Not all Psychiatrists are horrible! All you need to remember is that you have rights and that if you feel that someone isn't listening to you that you need to speak up.**


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